In this world, Magic is Everything. All people, all races, are granted with the power to perform mystical and magical feats via grimories, mystical tomes granted to each and every child on their 15th birthday. Those blessed by the mana can have their names written down in legend.
Shattered Grimoires is the work of the mind(s) of Ardere & Shattered Grimoire's staff. All characters and content are copyright their creators, and may not be replicated without their creators' permission. Black Clover is owned by Yuki Tabata and published by Viz Shonen Jump. All images belong to their original owners. The theme you are currently viewing was made by Eliza of ElizaCodes exclusively for Shattered Grimoires.
At first glance, Miroh Ath appears as either an unfinished or broken sword as all you are able to see is the unusual four-inch hilt one would often associate with a rapier. The grip is a finely carved onyx with a silver inlay spiralling up it leading into silver filigree and eventually into a half lotus design. It is only when the owner of the weapon channels mana through it does it show its true potential as at the bottom of the blade two small circles and a small orb appear, and at the base of the half lotus two larger circles appear, and on the petals, a symbol appears on each that seems illegible until you finish understanding the relic, at that point, you will be able to read it and find out the name of the daemon who's energy it holds. From the torch/petal hilt is a white pure aura dagger blade which is eighteen inches long and holds a purple tint to its edges. The blade itself almost appears to be made out of flames the way it curves makes it almost look like a khopesh. In the centre of the curve, an orb can be seen, while on the outside it has four spikes that can do damage.Lore:
Junior Lore:There isn't really a lot known about this relic. It's unknown how long ago it was created, where it was created or who created it, in fact, its name isn't even known. It was only by chance found by an archaeologist of a once noble family who fell on hard times after acquiring the relic from the ruins of an ancient battlefield. To try to change their family's fortune, redeem the renown they once had and fill their coffer they decided to raffle off some of the relics from their private collection.Intermediate Lore:~Get the relic to intermediate to unlock~Senior Lore:~Get the relic to Senior to unlock~Grand Lore:~Get the relic to Grand to unlock~Dive Lore:~Unlock the partial Daemon dive to unlock~
As this is an unusual relic it comes with an equally unusual ability but it comes with a bit of work to unlock. You are required to do a thread of 6,000 words where you come to not only understand the energies within the relic but unlock its hidden secret; that it is capable of a partial daemonic dive, and will allow you to have up to three small aesthetic changes while in this form. (The training must be approved like a normal partial dive) You are unable to access this dive ability before the relic reaches senior, the dive will be active for three rounds and it will be five rounds before you would be able to enter it once more, at grand it will allow you to enter the partial dive for four rounds but you will not be able to enter it again for six rounds. You are able to go to the spirit system and choose three abilities you will be able to access while in the partial daemonic dive. As with spirit dive, there are drawbacks that you will receive when the dive is on cooldown. This includes -5 m/s physical speed, -5 mana regeneration, -5 Debuff in Power, Durability, Control, Sensory and you will only be able to access intermediate or below spells.In addition to the above abilities, they will find that their spells will have a number of boons and weaknesses to them.Boons:- +25% spell speed and range to attack creation spells- are naturally able to ignore 5 points of the enemy’s abilities durability, increasing to 10 points at Grand rank.Weaknesses:- If an object or structure is magically backed then it will be lowered by a single-tier on a successful clash.- Lose 5 mana per post while in combat on top of their sustain. This effect stops once the player's mana has reached 20% of their max mana. This effect increases to 35% at Senior Rank, then 50% at Grand Rank. (This replaces your normal mana regen and cannot be negated with mana regen perks)
Name of the Ability L'togael IdnitaType & Uses: Trigger ¦ 4 usesRank & Specialization: Junior ¦ Attack CreationMana Cost: 8 Per Trigger ¦ 15 RechargeRange & Speed: 32.25m ¦ 12.5 m/sStats Affected: +2 PowerDescription:Touching one petal of the hilt alone is enough to activate this ability, the owner then needs to strike either from the left to right if they want a close strike or right to left if they want the strike to originate fifteen meters from behind the enemy in question. The strike appears as a pure aura purple orb around the size of a ping pong ball which seems to widen to two meters wide as it draws closer dealing junior rank damage and first-degree burns upon a successful direct hit. With the use of ammo rules, additional orbs can be made per trigger.
Name of the Ability Zhael DoyaType & Uses: Flow ¦ 3 Rounds Active ¦ 2 Rounds CooldownRank & Specialization: Junior ¦ Hex and CurseMana Cost: 8 ¦ 4 Range & Speed: 25m ¦ 10 m/sStats Affected: -4 speedDescription:Touching two of the petals on the hilt alone is enough to activate this ability, the owner then needs to then land a hit on the target they wish to affect. Upon a successful attack, it will leave a first-degree burn and a glowing crescent moon with a pale purple cloud appears on the infected area and begins to make the enemy in question feel almost lethargic decreasing their speed by -4 meters per second. Using the ammo rules, additional marks can be made, however, the speed debuff is decreased by one. Due to the nature of hex and curse, it will actively attempt to turn any buffs into debuffs and healing into damage as per the clashing rules.
Name of the Ability Yunza ZontType & Uses: Burst ¦ 2 Rounds Active ¦ 2 UsesRank & Specialization: Junior ¦ Attack Creation ¦ Hex and CurseMana Cost: 11 Initial Cost ¦ 12 Recharge CostRange & Speed: 25m ¦ 10 m/sStats Affected: +2 Power, -25% enduranceDescription:Touching all three of the petals on the hilt alone is enough to activate this ability, the blade itself seems to glow brighter for a few seconds before the white of the blade turns black. Striking diagonally left to the right from top to bottom will create a black and royal purple pure aura slash around three meters in length and half an inch thick in front of the owner while striking right to left from the bottom to the top will create the same strike but fifteen meters behind the enemy in question. As the strike gets closer it almost takes the shape of a net made of rope that is a centimetre and a half thick but still three meters long. It would give the illusion of a restraining spell, however, if any of the net touches a person then they will take not only a junior rank of damage and be dealt a first-degree burn but it will also leave a marking that resembles a solar eclipse with a royal purple glow around it. This marking weakens the defences of the one affected by it allowing for additional damage to be done in the following round. Using the ammo rules, additional marks can be made, however, the speed debuff is decreased by one. Due to the nature of hex and curse, it will actively attempt to turn any buffs into debuffs and healing into damage as per the clashing rules.
The more time went on, the more he felt as though he was getting closer to his destination, to finding what remained of Taiyo within this space that used to be part of some elven town or city. In all honesty, there was nothing truly riding on this. All there was to it was the fact that there was more than likely a body to be collected so the magic knights could truly cross another name off of their list of soldiers. So the family and friends would get to say goodbye and send the body either into the ground, or unto a funeral pyre. The more he thought about it, what with them being Vermilions and all, there was no way they were dedicating this body to the ground, not when they had this whole focus on fire magic… and just seemingly fire in general. Smirking at the thought, his expression quickly returned to normal.
This was no time to be smiling or smirking, not when there was still a very good chance that there was something dangerous still dwelling down here. The rats, although no match for someone like him, would have been lethal to most ordinary people that might have ventured through the area and stumbled upon them. Still going off of the assumption that these rats had been regular animals that got warped and twisted when they burrowed up and down and ate the necrotic flesh of dead vampires, the youth hoped that he had managed to kill every last one of them. Because if only one of them managed to get up to the surface, there was no telling the havoc they might wreak, nor the kind of abominations that might in turn spawn from them and their victims. No, one way or another, this entire place was coming down, as soon as he had either reclaimed the body or established that it wasn’t here.
It was for that reason that, for the last couple of minutes, Gawain had been forcefully moving all of the giant rat bodies into the far corner, believing they had the biggest chance of being properly buried once the ceiling and the room above came down on top of it. From that point on, the ground and the bugs dwelling within it would likely see to it that the remains were disposed of properly. Once he was done there, the boy moved on, deeper into the as of yet uncharted areas of the buried building. Heading in deeper and deeper, there was one thing that started standing out more and more, this being the fact that the seemingly pristine statues found further back where he came could be found here as well, though they were far from pristine. Some of them had their arms removed, some of them lacked a head, all while others had been written on in blood.
Though this still presented him with very little to go on, it at the very least proved to him that whatever else was down here was at the very least sentient, and clever enough to write. Inspecting one of the statues that had been beheaded, he took note of the word “Father” written in blood. To Gawain, this was meaningless, though perhaps it hinted at someone down here having some serious issues with their respective father. It made him wonder if maybe the thing down here was one of the vampires that had escaped the slaughter from a few months ago, surviving down here perhaps on the rats, or perhaps on Taiyo’s blood. Judging by what had happened to the children Aronil had taken and turned into vampires, it was no secret that he was trying to recreate a family he had lost, only for every single attempt ending up in blood-crazed feral bloodsuckers that abandoned their sanity.
In a way, it made sense that one of them might be rampaging down here while actively hating their new ‘father’. If this were to be the case, Gawain wondered if the vampire was aware of the fact that Aronil had died, that his body was somewhere in this same building, just a few floors up. Maybe the realization that the one that had cursed it to this fate dying was what would lessen the rage it felt, or maybe it would simply increase because it would never get the vengeance it craved. Or maybe it simply would not understand a single word Gawain said, intending solely just to murder him on the spot so that it would have something to feed on for a few days. Considering all of the outcomes, there really wasn’t a single one where that which was down here could be allowed to live and endanger the lives of literally everyone that might come across it.
Even though he was but a fifteen year old, he was a mage of the Silver Eagles, a magic knight in the Clover kingdom, it was his job to make sure threats such as these were handled with extreme prejudice. And while there were some who believed everything deserved a chance, or a second chance, there were things that simply could not be afforded one. And in spite of his age, Gawain was actually a pretty excellent judge of character, one of the perks of having seen some of the most despicable people on the planet trying to pose as nice ones, and vice versa. He had been forced to slit the throats of kind and dignified people, as well as those belonging to folk so rancid they’d make bog water taste like a strawberry milkshake in comparison. It was what made it less difficult for him to pose as a dumb kid, when in all truth, he was far more clever than he let on.
There were times where he let his baser instincts get the better of him, such as when he flashed his butt cheeks at a fellow magic knight to see if he could get a rise out of them and bring them into a duel they did not exactly what to be in. The undead were on the list of things that should not be allowed to wander about, Skjaergard being a good example of what could happen when such beings were not put down and instead gained a foothold to pose problems in the future. And among the undead, vampires were just about the worst, what with the fact that they could infect others and bestow upon them the same curse that holds them in its icy grip. To not die of old age, be forced to feed on people, innocent or otherwise, watching as the world around them decayed while they remained the same. It seemed like a horrible fate to him.
As he thought about what it might be like to live forever and effectively keep growing one’s arsenal of magical spells and skill, he felt something. It was a kind of heat, which was quite odd when considering they were roughly ten to fifteen meters below the surface. But still, he could clearly feel it, like a warm breeze moving underground, even though there couldn’t possibly be any kind of wind here that wasn’t of the magical variety. Not really sure what to expect, Gawain made sure to keep the dagger handy, finding that he had quickly managed to tap into the skills he had left behind some years ago. Much of it came down to nothing more than pure muscle memory, though there was more to it than just that. There was something about it that just made it feel like it belonged in his hands, though it still did not end there either.
There were things about this room, things he had not sensed before, that did not seem to belong to the original setup the elves had envisioned. For the longest time, Gawain had wondered why Aronil had always come back to this place over the past several hundred years whenever he was on the verge of being found out for being what he was. Due to the fact that the master vampire never physically aged, there had to have been times where he had to leave for extended periods of time. But to keep coming back to an empty building, forgotten by time and the minds of those that had once roamed these halls, it had never made sense to him outside of the clear reasoning being that the man simply wished to disappear. At first, Gawain thought the man would sneak into some kind of coffin and sleep for several decades before getting back to work, but this seemed to not be the full truth.
Though he had encountered a coffin or two in the sealed room above, the medical instruments, the odd relics from bygone times, the old tomes, all of it pointed to the fact that there was more happening down here than he and Waylon had initially realized. Though mostly obscured by the darkness, whenever the light from the torches flared up a bit, he could see the strange sigils and runes along the walls, though he could not sense any magical presence there. So while they may have served a purpose at some point, like how trap magic left magical circles in most cases, these had been placed using a physical medium and infused by mana at some point. Mana that hadn’t been sticking around for some time. Deciding to leave these things for what they were for now, the boy kept making his way through until he reached the very end of the room, and the start of what seemed like the final space within.
Once he felt the warm waft of air, it was as if the dagger itself responded to it, though he had no idea why that was. Through the odd and faded whispers he could hear when he held the dagger, it was as if it wanted to be here, but wanted to be somewhere up ahead at the same time. And even though the boy knew that this thing was nothing more than an inanimate object without a mind of its own, he could swear that this was the case. Though there were some things that came to mind as he kept approaching the end of the subterranean space, what he saw did not live up to even some of the wildest theories in his mind. For at the end, he saw various small fires, fires that appeared to be the same type of rats he had encountered earlier tossed together. It was clear that this fire was kept going through means of magic as their bodies likely wouldn’t have burned this long before being incinerated through and through.
In the center of a room sat a person, sitting on their knees with their head tilted forward as if staring at the ground. Even as Gawain got a bit closer to the entrance, it seemed that the individual did not respond to him. Within the light cast by the flickering flames, he could tell that there was something very wrong with this individual, their skin looking like they had suffered horrible burn wounds all over their body, causing clothing to be fused to the skin in some parts. By all respects, this person should have been in a world of torment, perhaps so much so that the pain might have ended their life. Looking at where the person was sitting, he could see another one of the magic circles he had seen in the previous space, though this one was still glowing, radiating and thrumming with magical power for some reason or another.
As he entered into the room, he felt as though something else was being set in motion, something magical. For as soon as he entered fully, the torches around the room began burning more fiercely, casting their light across the whole space, thus properly illuminating the whole scene. And a scene it was, a scene of utter horror and disgust. Aside from the burning rat carcasses, there were stone tables along the walls where bodies were laid out, some with open chests or skulls, bits and bobs missing here and there while on others, pieces had been added. It was some kind of workshop belonging to a madman, one which Gawain knew the name of, but not the motives. Luckily for him, he did not need to ponder on the matter for too long. For several seconds after making his way into the place, a loud rumbling could be heard as the room began to softly shake and heave.
“Greetings outsider, and congratulations. If you are here, it means my life has come to an end, causing the curtains to fall on a truly wretched existence. But alas, here we stand amidst my pile of shame.”
Dashing back while holding his dagger ready to strike at the sight of the ghostly image of Aronil, master vampire of Kiten. Finding out quite quickly that this was not in fact the same man, nor was it his ghost, it was merely some kind of simulacrum created through some form of trap-based magic, to be triggered whenever someone made it into this room from the outside. As it turned out, this would trigger an entire monologue, with the simulacrum not even exchanging eye contact. This meant that it was by no means specific, intended solely as some kind of a parting ‘gift’ bestowed on whoever made it this far down after killing the creature that owned the place.
“For the longest time, I’ve experimented using advanced forms of medical science, magic tools and the studies of the occult to find a way to restore my family to me. But as you no doubt experienced by now, the results have been quite… saddening. It’s shameful honestly.”
What the man called shameful and saddening, Gawain considered distasteful, disgusting and psychotic. He had seen the feral women and children above, driven into an animalistic frenzy, attacking, killing and feeding on whatever might venture in here. If they were the products of the less failed experiments, he honestly felt less bad for the ones that were laying dead on the tables here. Sure they were dead and all, but they were saved from a potential eternity of rage and pain. Even as he heard the simulacrum speak, the boy hated how similar it was to have the living version around again, leading him to wish that he could kill this thing too. Unfortunately, that was a wish that could not be granted.
“Though it took me well over two hundred years of study to know the human anatomy inside and out, obtain the required tools while finding a place where no one might hear the bothersome screams of my captives, learning the proper magic by which to go about it took even longer. It was only by sheer luck that I encountered proper demonic royalty willing to make a trade.”
Not really all that interested in hearing the whole story, or what kind of a trade the vampire had made with a demon, he began looking around to see if maybe there was something he could use to shut the projection down. All he really wanted to do now that he was here was to go through the bodies and find the one that belonged to Taiyo, if it was even down here to begin with. But as he began rummaging about, the simulacrum suddenly distorted a bit, responding to Gawain’s bothersome incursions. Once again causing the flames to intensify in radiance before simmering down and darkening, the burning rat carcasses began moving again. With fire coming out from their eyes, nostrils and mouth, it was as if this odd type of fire magic was possessing the bodies and keeping them in good enough shape to do battle again.
It started with a single rat rising back onto its feet, followed by three more as eerie little wisps of dark red flame began dancing across the room. Beginning to believe that these rats had likely been in some state of suspended animation, or were affected by some kind of wraith magic that was triggered by the flame wisps, it became imperative that he took out the rats and then destroyed the wisps before they managed to bring the entire room up into an undead state. Flipping the dagger in his hand before rushing the rats that were dashing towards him, he took the rat in the back off-guard by moving at his full speed. For some reason, Gawain had adapted to using the dagger fast enough for him to also handle using his ring simultaneously. Once again, his personal evolution had been taking place with leaps and bounds, allowing him to potentially overcome a very dangerous situation.
“Unfortunately, it took going through several dozen patients before I found out that the wisdom bestowed upon me by my demonic patron was not up to the task. While they all initially seemed like my beloved wife and child at first, it wasn’t long before the body or perhaps the soul that inhabited it rebelled, forcing it out and leaving what remained as a broken, angry, violent husk.”
While the simulacrum continued its programmed story, Gawain drove the dagger into the head of the last rat in line, twisting it inside of its skull before pulling it back out, killing it on the spot. Before the first of the rats even realized what had happened, the ashen haired youth killed the now dead rat as had as he could, sending it flying into the other rats before reaching out and slicing one of the flame wisps in half with the dagger. Proving that this dagger could cut magic as well as flesh and bone, he heard a loud eruption behind him as the murdered rat exploded. Likely being something worked into the revival spell that made it explode after being killed, he was luckily that the flame wisps that did the actual reviving did not follow suit. Had it done so, he would have taken an explosion straight to the face.
But he lacked the freedom and the luxury of time to ponder on what had been going on. Because all things considered, the spell itself was a work of art. It was just a shame that the art was murder and the canvas existed out of living beings. Destroying another of the wisps with the edge of his blade, he took a quick scan of the room, finding that there were at least three more embers flying about, while the rats had not been blown apart by their kin erupting in flame. Though this was in and of itself rather annoying and time consuming, it also meant that the eruption itself could not be as dangerous as it would have appeared. Knowing quite well how dense he had managed to make his own mana skin to the point where it essentially served like a suit of armor against magic, if it wouldn’t kill a giant, it wouldn’t do too much against someone like him either. Or so his reasoning was.
“Once I learned that I could not get my family back, existing for an eternity as something that would not die grew to be… undesirable. As such, I began working towards the opposite. I came to learn that, due to the souls requiring a vessel to go into so as to not fight one another for control, perhaps I could leave this body behind for a mortal one. And as luck would have it, a magic knight had been snooping around town for the vampire. And a vampire he found.”
Tearing through the rats that had been coming for him, the heat of the flames originating from their bodies and pouring from their mouth and nostrils made it more difficult to land any fatal blows. Instead, the boy would frequently need to alter the trajectory of his strikes so as to not get burned in the process. This would not have made much of a difference against a single combatant, though it made things significantly more challenging against a trio of attackers. Slashing into flesh and hacking into bone seemed to only further anger the creatures as, instead of blood, more fire seemed to come out of them. To say that they were all nothing more than volatile golems at this point would not have been much of an understatement, as the undead monstrosities held together by flame were just waiting to explode and cause further mayhem. But the rats weren’t his focus.
When he saw how one of the fire wisps landed on one of the bodies laying on the stone tables disappeared into it, the boy stabbed one of the rats into the neck while punching another across the room, giving him some space to move and some time to think. With the temporary opening and the imminent explosion of a second rat, he threw himself forward, allowing the blast of the eruption to push him onward with greater speed. Before he even really realized it himself, his blade had already been buried in the open skull of the raised ‘patient’, tearing the grey mass into a pulp and causing the body to fall back limp onto the table. Shortly after, the body exploded, though this much had already been factored in by the clever teenager. Diving underneath the stone table, it took the full brunt of the blast, allowing him to just duck out from underneath on the other side and catch one of the floating wisps before it managed to land on the nearby table and raise yet another body into unlife.
“When in the midst of transferring my soul into his body and his soul into mine, I learned I suffered a tiny lapse in judgement, forgetting to factor in any magical resonance. As such, when I tried to push him out, his body combusted as flames erupted from him like fireworks. Had it not been for my healing factor, I would have burned to death along with him. And for as much as he wished to, I did not allow him to die, not entirely at least.”
Even in the midst of a fierce and hectic battle with potential new enemies being quite literally at the ready to be summoned up to get into the ring, the boy still had his wits about him, he was a prodigy after all. So even as he cut, stabbed, ran and jumped about, he heard the words spoken by the simulacrum all too clearly. The thought that the heavily burnt, but seemingly still alive person being kept in a state of suspension in the center of the room was in fact Taiyo came as quite the shock. Somewhere deep down, he had hoped that the man was still alive, and that Gawain would get to play the hero that returned him alive to the Vermillion household. Whether it was because of the story the master vampire was telling him now, or simply because of the fact that he could not help the man in the way he had envisioned, it seemed to trigger more than just the angriest side of him. It seemed to trigger the dagger as well.
All of a sudden, the blade seemed to become a brighter hue of purple as the whispers were getting louder again, almost loud enough for him to actually hear the words that were being spoken. Seemingly in a flash, the boy maneuvered himself across the room, reaping the last of the flame wisps while beheading one of the rats, the resulting explosion actually managing to deal some damage to the last of the remaining rats. This just went to show that hitting them with subsequent explosions actually had the potential of bringing them down. However, since the creature was in the act of coming back up to its feet and into the fight, a quick and accurate toss of the dagger ended the creature’s short time as an undead as it landed between its eyes. Wandering over to it and tugging the blade back out, it seemed that such a toss could be pulled off if enough mana was in the blade before actually making the throw.
“What you see there is what remained of the man that almost killed me. I even went on and made a few modifications before putting him to sleep, believing he’d make for a good guard dog if anyone ever came for me in my workshop. His mind left a while ago, though I can promise you that the pain and the anger remain. If you believed the creatures above were bad, you’ve got a thing or two to learn from this guy.”
With the deaths of the rats, as well as the destruction of the wisps that ensured no other bodies would rise, the boy could now honestly keep his full attention on the simulacrum, still trying to discern where exactly it came from so that he could shut it down prematurely. At this point, he was done with hearing about all of the horrible things the vampire had done for his own personal gain, and established a pattern of thoughts in Gawain’s mind that made sure he would never turn into this kind of man. For as selfish and power hungry as he might be, his lust for power never extended beyond personal strength and martial brilliance. He did not seek life eternal, nor did he wish for any kind of position holding power and esteem within the country. Money also held no value to him, as he knew full well that those that held the most power within the palm of their hands would never be in need of such a foolish thing as currency and wealth.
No, he would just keep rising within the Silver Eagles at his own stellar pace, based off of nothing but potential, development and earned results. He would grow based on merit, nothing more, nothing less. So when he heard about the things Aronil had done to Taiyo, how he had planned on just using his body and ditching his old one somewhere else since he had more or less been fed up with immortality, it made him feel anger. Gawain did not know Taiyo personally, nor had he ever really heard a whole lot about him prior to this whole adventure. But he had met Leonard, a knight who had been his senior for some time, someone he had been wanting to spar against to see just how big a gap existed between them, only for him to get blown off when he was already at the Vermillion estate. And aside from that, there was not a single person of that family that he knew, so he did not feel like he owed them a thing. In fact, Leonard owed him for the way he had been treated.
But this was not so much a matter of proper treatment, ego or who owed who what. This was a matter of doing what was right. Because even though very few knew of his own personal ties to Griswold, if it turned out that the black knight had died, he would have appreciated it if someone told him about it or managed to bring the body back. Even if in this case, the body was in a godawful state, he still had to be brought back. Letting his eyes go over the body now that he had the time to do so, he saw how the clothing on his pants and chest had more or less fused with the skin completely, meaning trying to separate it would likely rip into the flesh itself. More than that, he saw some of the “modifications” the simulacrum of Aronil had brought up. One hand had been completely replaced with a blade while the tips of his other hand’s fingers had the nails replaced by sharp razors. Gawain shuddered to think whether or not Taiyo had been conscious when this was done to him.
“Should you be able to rid me of my final mistake, you will have my undying gratitude, which unfortunately isn’t worth a whole lot anymore. Before long, this entire place will come down, burying all that I have done under earth and rubble, allowing the world to one day forget about me and all those that ended up here. Pray you do not become one of them. And with that, I would wish you adieu….”
With that, the simulacrum snapped its fingers before taking a theatrical bow, after which the shaking and shuddering of their surroundings intensified, followed by the magic circle surrounding Taiyo disappearing. With the simulacrum disappearing hopefully forever, it seemed that the circle no longer kept the former magic knight asleep by force. As he opened his eyes, a loud scream burst from his lips, followed by him coughing up a good deal of blood and a few teeth. Just from seeing and hearing it, the young man could tell that it was just some of the pain that had been bottled up inside of him for a long time, finally getting an out now that he was awake and free to move. But one more thing was more clear than anything, and that was the look in the man’s eyes. There was no “Taiyo” left in there, no magic knight, no vermillion and no human being. There was only pain.
Continuing to cough violently while panting and heaving, the burnt man looked around the room as if looking for something, for someone. When he could not find the one responsible for hurting him the way that he had been, his eyes fell on Gawain, him being the only person remaining that still drew breath. Showing his teeth like a rabid dog, no words were formulated, nor did the man try to. Out of sheer pain and the thereby obtained madness, the ability to communicate had been given away, as did any concept for right and wrong. All this burned up husk cared about was carving its own twisted sense of justice into any and all that he could get his hands on, just as Aronil had intended. It was the most insidious and messed up manner of getting revenge on the man that had almost killed him and took away a chance at becoming human again.
To twist the mind of someone that had gone by a mentality of protecting and serving the people into one that only cared about sharing the constant excruciating pain he felt with any and all. Taking a deep sigh, Gawain bent through his knees ever so slightly, knowing that this was really only going to end one way. And seeing as how he was not going to be dying here this day, that meant that what remained of Taiyo had to be put down, once and for all. With a quick burst of speed, the charred husk leapt forward, bringing down the blade attached to his wrist on top of the young eagle. With a quick parrying blow from below, he stopped the attack, finding that he was in fact fairly strong on top of being quite fast. Then, before he knew it, he felt something ripping through his clothing. Tearing through his shirt, Gawain managed to dash back just fast enough to keep the man from cutting into his chest with his razor-tipped fingers.
Upon dashing back, the blade that was pushing down on him went forward, cutting a chunk of stone out of the floor, showing that the sword itself had not been dulled by much. However, his loss of footing allowed Gawain to dash back in, landing several deep cuts across the man’s upper arm, elbow and the side of his neck. Causing a good deal of bleeding, it seemed he had made a miscalculation when estimating how deep he needed to cut in order to sever his tendons and render his arm useless during the fight. Due to the magical burns causing his charred skin to harden, it was like cutting through hard leather with a dull knife: a difficult feat to pull off. But the boy was not dissuaded from continuing along his path to victory. As these new wounds seemed to just be the equivalent of adding several buckets of water to a lake, it seemed to barely register outside of just making his foe more angry.
Adding onto the oddity that was this whole situation, when drinking into the blood of its former owner, the dagger almost began vibrating in the palm of his hands so heavily that it almost caused Gawain to drop it, which unfortunately gave the Vermillion time to recapture his composure. For however much that was worth. This time, almost as if purely by instinct, the burned man moved to the stone tables, where due to his close proximity, his old grimoire activated, hovering up into the air around the man and restoring some magical capabilities to his arsenal. All in all, not a profitable outcome. When this came followed up with a torrent of flame being thrown into his direction, mixed with his dagger behaving like someone having a seizure, Gawain could only rely on using his own magic to fight back. This put him into a generally bad position due to the destructive nature of his moves, mixed with the unstable state of the room they were in.
But if it meant dying now or dying later, it was a choice easily made.
Instead of going with an attack that went into various directions, or picking a spell that had the potential of blasting a tiny hole inside of just about anything, he went with something wider. Having to stop an entire torrent of flame from reaching him without doing too much damage to the ceiling, he pushed back with an equal sized blast of compressed air, tearing the flames apart with relative ease. Because at the end of the day, fire was destructive and potent, but Gawain’s magic was the kind of magic that took destruction to the next level, acting as the perfect example for “Fighting fire with infinitely more potent fire”. Though that was not an actual saying that existed, it was the best example in Gawain’s mind as he pushed the flames aside and shot Taiyo into a nearby wall with enough force to break the bones in the average human body.
Name of Spell: Force Elemental Type: Air Pressure Rank & Spell Type: Senior | Attack Creation Range & Speed: 80m | 45 m/s Mana Cost: 30 | 15 Stats Effected: - Applicable Perks: Overpowered | Quick Shot Description: By extending the left hand and pointing an open palm (stop motion) and holding a half-ox sign with the right hand, Gawain's eyes flare up with a wispy green hue as a means of initiating the spell and as a vocal point for the release of mana, a blast of wind is released into the chosen direction roughly nine meters wide and tall. Aiming to envelop the target and blasting them and everything else caught up in the blast back, the spell uses a fairly powerful knockback effect capable of tossing targets back up to thirteen meters + an additional 5 meters for every 10 Power. The attack itself is potentially lethal upon direct hits, capable of breaking bones and can easily tear through non-magical structures, dealing Senior rank damage. To those without at least 30 sensory, this spell will be invisible, appearing as a flat wispy green square to others.
With a loud crack, the man crashed against the stonework, which did not seem to do much for the overall structure. For his own body however, it did a ton. Causing various breaks throughout his body, it also caused a few protrusions as bone stuck out of his sword-bearing arm. And while such a thing should put it out of the race entirely, believing such damage would have been enough to put the man down had been nothing but idle hope. But it wouldn’t matter, it didn’t matter. As the man pulled himself together and let out an almost bestial roar out of sheer anger and pain, what seemed like small stars and suns began forming. Almost as if charging up some kind of final attack as a means of taking out everything around him, Gawain wondered whether the goal had been to blow this whole place to hell and allow him to escape to the outside.
At this point however, the likely chance of that succeeding without the blast ending prematurely due to the sheer amount of rock and soil above them, they would sooner be buried alive. As such, Gawain could not allow this to happen, not yet. Throwing caution to the wind, he approached quickly, using the full totality of his speed while enhanced by a physical reinforcement spell that pushed his speed close to fifty meters per second, his eyes began glowing with a faint jade hue. Dashing back and forth, it made it difficult for Taiyo’s bloodshot and dry eyes to keep up with his exact location. Then, with a no-holds barred attack, Gawain stabbed the man with an upward strike, forcing the blade to destroy the brain as it entered upwards from the chin. In that instant, what remained of Taiyo Vermillion had been put to rest once and for all as his body collapsed. Almost as if mourning its former wielder, the blade of mana deactivated itself against Gawain’s will.
Though he could most likely have kept it up by supplying a constant flow of mana, the whispers disappearing were a welcome change of pace. But just because his undesirable foe had perished did not mean that he could take things easy now. On the contrary, they were still very much in danger of being buried alive. So by using and maintaining his increased speed, he pocketed his dagger and grabbed onto Taiyo’s body as he began drag-sprinting across the room. Moving quite fast for someone hauling a corpse, the boy made it across the length of the first room before some chunks began coming down. Making his way up the staircase, dragging the body along became at least twice as difficult, though he had not come all this way just to leave it here and go to the Vermillion estate with nothing but tall tales and empty hands. So as he quite literally dragged the body up by holding on to one foot and hauling it up, part of the shaking seemed to have stopped.
But by the time he reached the top of the staircase, it seemed that all that had stopped was the rumbling beneath them as the room they had just entered had almost entirely fallen down to the floor below. This created a wide gap in various locations with few walkable areas for him to move through. Normally, this would not have posed a problem for him at all, as he was light on his feet, weighed next to nothing and was incredibly fast. However, all of the dead weight attached to him not only increased his weight and made him less nimble, it cut down his speed by at least half. Running his mind through various scenarios in what seemed like fractions of seconds, he factored in the exact location he was at right now, knowing that the outside world would be no more than six meters above him. Six meters of ground weighing an incredible amount. At this point, he could do two things. He could make a run for it and hope that he would make it, or he could rely on himself.
He could rely on his ability to destroy anything and everything he set his mind to.
While hardly being the most favorable of options, the chances of him making it out of here while dragging a sack of flesh with him without any way of knowing which portion of the ceiling would come next made it even worse as far as decisions went. As such, he pulled up the body and hung his arm over his own shoulder. Then, he held up his hand while looking up at the ceiling. With a quick burst, the boy released his most powerful spell, sending a grid-shaped field up into the air, cutting everything it encountered into small blocks of roughly equal size. While this would not give him his freedom and would just cause that area to come down, the fact that it was no longer on whole but a mass of smaller blocks meant that it would be easier for him to blow a gap into it through which he could escape before being buried alive.
Name of Spell: Grid Elemental Type: Air Pressure Rank & Spell Type: Grand | Attack Creation | Sensory (Homing) Range & Speed: 150m | 85 m/s Mana Cost: 50 | 25 Stats Effected: +12 Power Applicable Perks: Overpowered | Quick Shot | Battle Knight | Apex Predator Description: By pointing his right fist at a chosen target or direction while simultaneously forming the half-dragon seal with his left hand, a grid-shaped pattern of air pressure magic will rapidly form right in front of his right fist. When he opens up his fist, the grid will launch forward instantly, slicing through buildings and obstacles in its path and leaving it in the shape of cubic bits and pieces of roughly equal size, leaving deep lacerations and cuts and being potentially lethal on a direct hit. For every 50 Control, an additional shot can be fired. In addition, the accuracy and chance to hit can be further improved by utilizing Homing rules, including following the target in adherence to those same rules. The square-shaped grid is roughly 12 meters wide, being invisible to those without at least 50 Sensory, appearing as a wispy green grid to others.
Releasing as many shots as he could at a slightly different angle, a total of three shots was launched straight up, cutting everything in its path into blocks before being cut into tinier fragments, which were then cut apart a third time to make them even smaller. Next, before as much as wasting a single breath or blinking even once, a secondary attack was sent straight upward in an attempt at shattering the bits hit and shooting them upward and sideways with so much force that they might shatter enough of the bits and pieces near them to blow open a temporary hole. A hole big enough for them to get out through. As the air pressure blew everything apart with even greater force and success than he had initially hoped, he gathered all of the strength he had in his feet before leaping upwards, followed by something he had only ever attempted once before.
Making himself weightless, the only force working against his leap was the weight provided by Taiyo. Luckily, this was not enough to weigh him down fully as the two essentially ‘flew’ out towards the surface. Only managing to hold this up for a moment and in a single direction as he only knew how to activate it and hadn’t trained it enough to use this offensively or defensively, this utilitarian means of application was the best he could hope for right now. As they floated their way out, Gawain delighted in seeing the evening sun as it started setting by the horizon, the ground still crumbling away beneath them. Only being able to keep it up for so much longer, the two managed to land halfway up a nearby tree. Dropping the body on top of a branch while holding himself up by another branch, he pulled himself up to the point where he could take a seat and more importantly, take a deep breath to gain his bearings.
As he watched the subterranean workshop sink into the ground entirely, more and more portions of the ground were shifting around before falling and dropping into the hole. Before long, nothing remained of the base itself as the soil began to fill up every nook and cranny like water being poured into an anthill. Remaining up in that tree for what felt like the better part of an hour, the first time the boy actually seemed to move was after the sun had already fully set, casting the world into another dark night with stars starting to shine down their dying light. Feeling as though he had been asleep with his eyes wide open, Gawain gave his limbs a good stretch before he began climbing down. With a slight tug, he pulled the body down from the branch he had placed it on, causing it to fall a small ways down to the ground with a soft thud. Once there, the Silver Eagle once again threw his body onto his back and begun the long journey back.
In time, he made his way to a nearby town where he asked the locals to give the man’s body a proper bath. Even though he knew that he could only have the blood cleaned off along with the dirt before having the body wrapped up and prepared for travel, it would be better to do it as opposed to not doing it at all. After all, the man was from a notable family that more than likely would not appreciate it if he brought it in while dirtier than your average pig that had been rooting through the mud for the better part of a day. His request, though met with some pushback, was eventually taken up when he made it clear that this was the body of a high-seated member of the Vermillion household and the Crimson Lion squad, and that not doing this simple task would earn them the ire of both. Requesting they also took off the razors and the sword that had been grafted onto his body, Gawain himself also took a bath.
Roughly two hours after the fact, Gawain had become clean as a whistle while the body of Taiyo had been prepared about as well as it could have, given the state it had already been in before he found it. During the time spent waiting, the ashen haired teen had collected his broom begun making the journey out of Kiten with a body in tow. Using the night sky for cover as he could imagine the looks on people’s faces upon seeing him hauling a dead body around in broad daylight, he made his way straight towards the Vermillion estate. After his failed attempt at a spar with Leonard, he now knew the way quite well, and would likely make his way over there somewhere in the next couple of hours. If all went well, maybe he might take a short break nearby so that he could get a few hours of sleep. Right now though, he was just glad that he had managed to recover the body and see to it that the evils of Aronil would never see the light of day.
It was just sad that Taiyo would not get to see the demise of the vampire he had once come to put down.
Name of Spell: Force Elemental Type: Air Pressure Rank & Spell Type: Senior | Attack Creation Range & Speed: 80m | 45 m/s Mana Cost: 30 | 15 Stats Effected: - Applicable Perks: Overpowered | Quick Shot Description: By extending the left hand and pointing an open palm (stop motion) and holding a half-ox sign with the right hand, Gawain's eyes flare up with a wispy green hue as a means of initiating the spell and as a vocal point for the release of mana, a blast of wind is released into the chosen direction roughly nine meters wide and tall. Aiming to envelop the target and blasting them and everything else caught up in the blast back, the spell uses a fairly powerful knockback effect capable of tossing targets back up to thirteen meters + an additional 5 meters for every 10 Power. The attack itself is potentially lethal upon direct hits, capable of breaking bones and can easily tear through non-magical structures, dealing Senior rank damage. To those without at least 30 sensory, this spell will be invisible, appearing as a flat wispy green square to others.
At first glance, Miroh Ath appears as either an unfinished or broken sword as all you are able to see is the unusual four-inch hilt one would often associate with a rapier. The grip is a finely carved onyx with a silver inlay spiralling up it leading into silver filigree and eventually into a half lotus design. It is only when the owner of the weapon channels mana through it does it show its true potential as at the bottom of the blade two small circles and a small orb appear, and at the base of the half lotus two larger circles appear, and on the petals, a symbol appears on each that seems illegible until you finish understanding the relic, at that point, you will be able to read it and find out the name of the daemon who's energy it holds. From the torch/petal hilt is a white pure aura dagger blade which is eighteen inches long and holds a purple tint to its edges. The blade itself almost appears to be made out of flames the way it curves makes it almost look like a khopesh. In the centre of the curve, an orb can be seen, while on the outside it has four spikes that can do damage.Lore:
